At abolitionist laws were approved in Brazil between 1850 and 1888 and were part of the gradual transition that the country went through until enacting the abolition of slavery, through Golden Law, on May 13, 1888. In this 38-year period, the great abolitionist laws passed were the LawofbellyFree and the LawFromSexagenarians.
Also access: How was the life of ex-slaves after the abolition of slavery?
Context
The period we consider in this text (1850-1888) had as its starting point the Eusébio de Queirós Law, which prohibited definitely the overseas traffic of African slaves. Through this law, the slave trade it ended, and its effective application caused the number of slaves sent to Brazil to drop drastically in the 1850s.
The Eusébio de Queirós Law was a consequence of pressure from England on Brazil for the slave trade to be decreed. This pressure became very great from 1845, when the British approved the Bill Aberdeen, law that allowed British vessels to attack and imprison slave ships that were in the Atlantic Ocean.
With the approval of this law, the Brazilian authorities effectively repressed the slave trade and, between 1851 and 1856, about 6,900 enslaved Africans disembarked in Brazil.|1| The political debate during the 1850s was entirely due to issues related to the measures that should be taken to prevent the arrival of slave ships in Brazil.
With the concerns over the Eusébio de Queirós Law gone, the debate on the abolition of slavery resurfaced. Brazil, along with Puerto Rico and Cuba (Spanish colonies), was one of the last places to remain with slavery. This issue, combined with the slave revolts, made some politicians begin to consider the possibility that legislation would be created in favor of abolition.
This legislation made a gradual transition, which did not displease the country's economic elites, especially those in the Southeast, interested in postponing, as much as possible, the abolition of slave labor. In the 1860s, the possibilities of implementing this gradual transition began to be discussed, and the first law resulting from this debate was the Lei do Ventre Livre.
know more: slavery in Brazil
law of the free womb
The Free Womb Law was approved on September 28, 1871 and decreed that all children of slaves born in Brazil after 1871 would be considered free, but with conditions to do so. The slave owner would have two options to grant manumission: if he chose to release him with eight years, he would receive an indemnity of 600 milreis, if he chose to release him at the age of 21, he would not receive any indemnity.
This law was born from a request of the emperor D. Pedro II, who requested, in 1865, the José Antônio Pimenta Bueno, Conservative Party politician, a study to realize the emancipation of slaves. Pimenta Bueno's proposal suggested the release of the slaves' children after a period of indemnity service, but it ended up being shelved due to Paraguay War.
When the conflict ended, a proposal similar to Pimenta Bueno's was presented by the cabinet chaired by José Maria da Silva Paranhos, the Viscount of Rio Branco. The idea behind the presentation of this law was to have abolition implemented in Brazil through the law and not through a revolt (as was the case with the Haitian case).
The proposal, of course, displeased slaveholders, who feared that debate over this law would encourage slaves to rebel against their masters. Slavery advocates also refused to grant freedom to the children of slaves without receiving compensation. Thus, the solution found was the one mentioned above: only those who freed the slave's child at the age of eight would receive compensation.
also know: Slave labor in mines
Another imposition of this law was that it imposed the obligation of every master to enroll his slave in a national registry. Slaves who were not properly registered would be considered free by law. This determination allowed the legalization of slaves who had illegally entered Brazil from 1831 onwards.
The Free Womb Law was not looked upon favorably by the abolitionists who demanded immediate and unrestricted abolition, because the approval of this law contributed to alleviate the debate. Anyway, the Law of the Free Womb opened up for a intense action of abolitionist lawyers, who searched the records for irregularities, checked whether the age of the slaves' children was correct, etc.
Sexagenarian Law
In the 1880s, abolitionism gained strength and spread throughout the country, reaching all social classes. The growth of abolitionism reflected the growth of resistance actions (legal and illegal) and the emergence of associations that defended the cause. Other reflexes of the strengthening of abolitionism were the conservative reaction of that decade and the Sexagenarian Law.
The strength of abolitionism in the 1880s was evident, but slave groups grew and began to take action to curb the advance of this idea in Brazil. The strengthening of slavers encouraged the approval of the Sexagenarian Law, or Saraiva-Cotegipe Law, on September 28, 1885.
The Sexagenarian Law decreed that all 60 year old slaves or more would be freed, but for that they should work for three years to his lord as a form of indemnity. The law also determined that the freedmen contemplated by this law could not move from province to province and should, obligatorily, establish residence in the municipality where they were freed, for five years old.
The Sexagenarians Law was considered by the abolitionist movement as a conservative and backward law, whose sole objective was to contain the growth of the abolitionist movement. The objective of the slave owners with this law, however, was not achieved, as, little more than two years later, the Lei Áurea was enacted in Brazil.
Accessalso: Understand how the overseas slave trade worked
conservative reaction
In the context of the growth of the abolitionist movement, as mentioned, there was a reaction from conservative groups that aimed to curb social and economic transformations which were defended by the abolitionist movement. In this sense, three measures are considered clear examples of this:
Saraiva Law (1881)
Sexagenarian Law (1885)
Overturning the debate on agrarian reform
This conservative reaction reinforces the elitist profile of a large part of the political classes of the late nineteenth century, who had a great interest in maintaining the status quo(term used to refer to the current state of affairs). In this part of the text, we will highlight the Saraiva Law and the overturning of the debate on land reform, since we have already commented on the Sexagenarian Law.
The first highlight is the Saraiva Law, approved on January 9, 1881. This law carried out considerable changes in the electoral system Brazilian and contributed to exclude the right to vote of many. Elections in Brazil stopped being indirect and became direct, but the minimum annual income required to be entitled to vote increased from 100 milreis to 200 milreis.
Two requirements that the Saraiva Law imposed were the person prove your income and sign the voter registration document. If the person did not sign this document, he could not vote, and that eliminated automatically all illiterate, as they could not sign the document.
Also access: Discover this episode of resistance of African slaves in Brazil
This law, then, removed the possibility of illiterates to vote and required a higher income to have access to the right to vote. Thus, this law specifically affected the poor strata composed, in large part, of freedmen and free blacks (in resulting from the Free Womb Law) and, through legal mechanisms, created difficulties for these groups to have the right to vote. With that, this right was restricted to a very small elite group that corresponded to about 1% of the population.
The conservative reaction also aimed to overturn the debate on land reform. This was a measure advocated by some abolitionists, such as AndrewReboucas and JoaquimNabuco, who defended the fundamental need of the freedman to have access to land so that he could have a place to earn his livelihood.
This agenda was not much debated among abolitionists, but historians suggest that the abolition granted in 1888 was a way of ending the nascent debate over agrarian reform. Attempts to discuss the matter were silenced by conservative groups that worked in Brazilian politics.
|1| ALENCASTRO, Felipe. Africa, numbers of the Atlantic traffic. In.: SCHWARCZ, Lilia Moritz and GOMES, Flávio (eds.). Dictionary of slavery and freedom. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2018, p. 57.
By Daniel Neves
Graduated in History
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historiab/leis-abolicionistas.htm